There are quite a few games that I haven't played before owing to the fact that I never owned the hardware they were on back in the day, or in any days since, really. Once you buy into one system, you stick with it. The PlayStation was my first console, the PlayStation 2 my second, the PlayStation 3 my third... It wasn't until only a few years ago, with the intent of going through this 1001 list that I even gave a look into buying the likes of an Xbox 360, or N64.
So, it's 2018, and I've had my N64 for some months now, and one of the boxless, manual-less cartridges I have available to play is Banjo-Kazooie, a third-person platformer heavily inspired by Super Mario 64 - and why not?
Taking control of a banjo playing bear and his sarcastic feathered friend, you must rescue your sister from the witch Gruntilda, obtaining more collectables than you can even conceive of along the way.
Let's see what I remember from however many playthroughs and speedruns I've seen down the years...
Fun Times
From the outset, Banjo-Kazooie looks and feels a little bit too kid friendly for some players, but don't let appearances deceive you. You may be attacking giant bouncing carrots and collecting sentient honeycombs, but things will soon ramp up on your adventure and you'll need to find the platforming prowess to keep pace.
Gruntilda, jealous of no longer being the prettiest person in the land, kidnaps Banjo's sister, Tooty, with the intent of transferring their looks to each other. Naturally, it makes little sense, but Gruntilda stubbornly refuses to speak in anything but rhymes, which makes this a fairytale, and in fairytales, all sorts of things can happen.
After a tutorial level to introduce the basic moves to you - jumping, fighting, moving the camera and so on - you are funnelled into Mumbo's Mountain, a level that sets out to show you the many, many things you'll be getting up to in Banjo-Kazooie.
Where Super Mario 64 gave you a picture to jump into and an idea of what to do for a given star, Banjo-Kazooie has you find the level entrance somewhere in a small hub world of sorts, and then just explore it, looking for golden Jiggies, or jigsaw puzzle pieces that'll act as keys to unlocking future levels.
With ten to find in each world, and each being hidden in different places, behind different challenges, your entire skill set will be put to the test. Some will involve you collecting another set of collectables, or will require you to learn and use a new ability, such as firing projectiles.
The controls for all these skills are somewhat obvious and are taught to you without any problems. Buttons are often context-sensitive or used in combination with other buttons in order to achieve a different effect, like high jumps, double jumps, rolling attacks, flying and slam attacks and so on. Once you're introduced to one, you are - certainly at this point in the game - very close to where you need to really explore how this skill works in order to get a 'gimme' collectable, and will then have to keep an eye out for other areas of the map where these skills can be used.
At no point during your journey are you kicked out of the level for completing something, like in Super Mario 64, and so you're left to wander until you have what you need and decided to move on. From a hundred musical notes, you need at least 50 in order to open a door blocking your path into the next part of the hub world, for example, so if you collect them and just two of the ten Jiggie pieces, you can explore another map.
Frustrations
I didn't just collect the minimum amounts though but spent my time gathering everything I could see and work out how to get. There were some pieces that I couldn't get, my opportunity missed or my skills lacking, but the nature of the game is that you can hop back into a previous level to get what you missed the first time.
The controls, as I say, are fairly easy to grasp, and while you have some degree of camera control, it can get a little caught and does move against your will from time to time, whenever the geometry necessitates it. For the most part, it's fine, but it's not perfect, and that allows me to put up cheap screenshots like this:
After a while of wrestling with the camera on your hunt for hundreds of collectables, you'll end up just wanting a break and have to quit the game. At which point...
Huh.
Turns out that I selected 'Save and Quit', then only one of those things happened, a cutscene played, and a Game Over screen appeared. This didn't just happen during my emulation run, but my original hardware run as well, although, with that first ever attempt, I died to a bull and instead of respawning somewhere with one fewer life, I seemed to need to restart the level.
Given that I was nearly finished with it and was just messing around with the bull (to the point where I got stuck against a wall where he would immediately kill me upon waking up), that was pretty annoying, and a soft rage quit leading to a Game Over would make sense. But replaying it via emulation, going to the 'Save and Quit' option, assuming that whatever button you pressed saved the game and then seeing that it didn't... I'm calling bullshit somewhere.
Final Word
So I've not played too much of Banjo-Kazooie, and its failures were largely of my own making, but if I had to go back to it and try again, I would. It's an easy game to jump into, and navigating the world feels good. Underwater sections don't, but that's because they're underwater sections. When Banjo-Kazooie is a fun platformer that tasks you with navigational puzzles to collect this and that, I just sort of got on with it.
Run over there, see what there is. Run away from it and come back later if you don't like it. If you can't make progress, go somewhere else. Exploration is the key, and not a minute goes by without something happening.
But, a lot of those somethings are collectables entering your pockets. Musical Notes, Jiggies, Mambo skulls, Feathers, Jinjos, Eggs... There's a lot to keep an eye out for, and I don't know how important each one is in the long run, and there's an argument for them leading you to do things just because they're there, and not because the thing itself is interesting to do.
That could do with far better explanation. Fetch quests is probably what I'm trying to mention. It can feel like something is in a level just for the sake of you wondering around it looking for a new collectable that will never be seen again but will unlock a Jiggie when you get them all. Great. I mean, that kind of gameplay can still challenge players, or take them to interesting places, but it can be a bit tedious if you've missed one or two bloody notes and can't for the life of you think where they could be.
If I were to play again, I'd savestate like there's no tomorrow, especially before deciding to call it quits for the day, but that's just me. The point is, I'd play it again and I'd choose it over Super Mario 64 any day of the week.
The 1001 list says otherwise, saying that for all its improvements and highlights, Banjo-Kazooie just doesn't have the imagination that Super Mario 64 does. Who cares? It looks far more welcoming, has somewhat humorous characters, an easy to follow and enjoy plot... it has clearly taken what made Super Mario 64 work and made it better. And then worse, with all the collectables. Can't have everything, I suppose.
Play Banjo-Kazooie. There will be better platformers like it later, but for now, it's at the top of the mountain. Polymorphed into an ant, so that it could climb up a surface too slippery for the slippery surface climber that hangs out in your backpack. Obviously.
Fun Facts
Banjo's development journy saw him have wings sprout out of his backpack to enable him to jump further, then legs poke out to enable him to run faster, and fianlly a head was added because it made sense that the wings and legs would belong to another character that lives in his backpack, and thus Kazooie was born.
Banjo-Kazooie, developed by Rare, first released in 1998.
Version played: Nintendo 64, 1998, also via emulation.
Version watched: Nintendo 64, 1998 (Multiple, including Hyperresonance)